Cheap PC Overhaul

March 13, 2007 2:10 AM

Ok, so I fried my motherboard.

I've had this emachines for several years now (2.8 celeron, 80gig hd) and last night it started flashing the HDD, zip and dvd drive madly when I plugged it back in. After turning it off and on again it booted and everything was fine until today. Today, when I shut it down to unplug it, it started doing the odd flashing again. Thinking I could get it to boot once more and let it run, I tried the power button again and was rewarded with a nice click and the smell of something burnt. Oops. The power supply still works (Tested it by jumpering the green wire to ground) and spins up an old HD with no problem, but the rest of the system is dead. I checked the bottom of the processor for teltale burnt pins but that seems fine and nothing on the topside of the MB is obviously the problem.

So, my question is essentially: what can I salvage from this thing? I can't go out and get an entire new system right now but what can I still trust to plug into a new board? If the processor is bad, will it wreck a new MB? What about the ram (It's PC2700)? And another problem, since I'm running the OEM XP and can't get it to boot, is there another, besides deleting the drivers from device manager, way to pull the XP motherboard swap trick and fool it into accepting the installed OS? I really don't want to go to Vista.

posted by IronLizard to computers & internet (18 comments total)

Unfortunately, there's no 100% reliable way to make sure that components attached to a motherboard haven't been damaged, when there are unspecified power problems. Machines of that approximate era often had the bad capacitors issue, however, and if this is what killed your motherboard, there's a fairly good chance only things like your on-board DC-to-DC converter module, and the bad caps themselves were clobbered. If you visually inspected the board carefully, and found bad caps, I think you'd be fairly safe trying to move your processor and memory to a different mobo.

Once you've done that, however, you're probably going to be dealing with a different chipset, and perhaps a different BIOS, particularly if your new motherboard supports SATA drives, as most anything you'll buy now does. To get support for the new chipsets, you need to do a repair install of Windows XP, to rebuild your Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) and then use the CD that comes with your new mobo to add the appropriate drivers. If you're original install media doesn't include SP2, I highly recommend slipstreaming the SP2 service pack into a new install CD, assuming your machine was supplied with a bootable Windows installation CD in the first place. Unfortunately, I think eMachines was one of those vendors that didn't supply a bootable CD, so getting Windows to come up on a generic mobo may be a bit of an excercise in frustration for you. Good luck.

The big problem that might bite you, is that if you can find and buy an old Celeron mobo, and your components are fried, it's good money after bad, compared to buying a current mobo/processor bundle, that could still use your memory. There's not a lot of value or cost in low end processors, and you'd reduce your risk substantially by going with a modern bundle.
posted by paulsc at 2:35 AM on March 13, 2007

I wouldn't trust the motherboard, the CPU or the power supply. The bigger problem is that simply "swapping" the motherboard is going to be a pain in the ass. How much is your time worth? Because for just a bit more, you can get a whole new machine, take out the old hard drive, throw it into the new box and have a nice spare (most dealers still sell Windows XP) when the old drive finally goes south.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 4:21 AM on March 13, 2007

I had this problem a couple of months back. I recommnend the following:

Get an external caddy for your HD. Copy the data somewhere else (even temporarily).

Buy the same motherboard on ebay... if its old, it will be cheap.

Hopefully this will solve your problem at the first hurdle. However in my case it was the PSU and the mobo which were broken. None of the other components were affected.

Good luck!
posted by tomw at 4:29 AM on March 13, 2007

I had the exact same problem 3 weeks ago, I had an Abit KV8 Pro motherboard that finally gave up the ghost.

I bought a board as similar to the KV8 Pro as possible (NF8), plugged everything in (200gb HDD, 2x512mb RAM, Radeon X700, Sempron 3300+, DVR+R, Sound) and XP booted first time. All I needed to do was put in the driver CD from the new motherboard and network, sound, USB, Firewire... everything installed by itself in 10 minutes.

Once you get ethernet working, you're pretty much home and dry.

My advice, buy a board as similar as you can to your old one. I got mine on eBay for about £30 and it works perfectly.
posted by ReiToei at 5:10 AM on March 13, 2007

When my mobo died - complete with actual burned bits on the surface!- last year, I decided to upgrade. If the case is standard mini ATX, consider getting a motherboard/chip package from some place like New Egg or Mwave. My power supply was still running strong until I replaced *it* two weeks ago (not enoguh juice for 6 hard drives), but I also discovered that the mobo had taken out one bank of memry when it shit the bed.

I also wanted to mention that "home and dry", in ReiToei's comment, is a fantastic phrase.
posted by notsnot at 5:40 AM on March 13, 2007

For what replacing the MoBo will cost you, you can buy a better machine these days. Why bother?
posted by fourcheesemac at 7:25 AM on March 13, 2007

I can't see any bad caps or other burnt components either on the board itself or in the psu, but I'll pull the whole board today.

Upgrading seems like a good idea on the surface, but when you consider that the ram itself costs more than a new motherboard (a much better one than mine, no less). We may be able to squeeze a whole new machine into the budget but right now I'm knee deep in rebuilding an engine (that's getting a bit expensive).

As much as I would love to get this exact one from ebay, it's not on there (and I couldn't get it by tonight anyway, this has to be local).

I want to try what ReiToei has done, though maybe I'll get a computer store to test the RAM and CPU before I buy anything. I'll check back tonight.
posted by IronLizard at 8:43 AM on March 13, 2007

It is rare for problems to propagate much, although it can happen. Most of the components in your system will be fine, and even the damaged ones are unlikely to cause damage when you test them in a good system.

If you are interested in learning hardware troubleshooting, there is value in working through this, but I wouldn't do it on my main system, because it will take a long time. Your problem is complicated somewhat, compared to ReiToei's, because some of the hardware you are working with could be proprietary to emachines. Find out the model number of your system, and we can see if you can use a standard ATX/mATX motherboard.

A replacement motherboard will definitely be cheaper than an equivalent system, but it may not be enough cheaper to justify the effort. What is your budget?
posted by Chuckles at 9:11 AM on March 13, 2007

Well, I have 130 in hand and can definitely count on around that much more by this evening. For that I think can throw together half of a system (damn near everything but the ram) from the sellers around here. Really, I'm embarassed. I should be more familiar with this since I advise others on occaision, but I haven't actually had to buy a single new part other than a monitor for such a long time.

The system is a t2792, with a MB P/N of 20030812 (Imperial).
posted by IronLizard at 9:28 AM on March 13, 2007

Hey, the power switch on the ATX case is a normal spst, or something else? Because mine's not giving me continuity.
posted by IronLizard at 9:42 AM on March 13, 2007

Nevermind, it's momentary.
posted by IronLizard at 9:49 AM on March 13, 2007

There was a run of capacitor problems a few years back after on manufacturer failed to steal a competitor's complete formula. Several friends were able to remove and resolder failed caps, but that's a lot of work to go to to keep an old board limping.
posted by dws at 10:58 AM on March 13, 2007

Ok, thanks everyone. The problem isn't quite so pressing now, so I suppose it's just a matter of deciding what I want in a new system and whether to build it or buy it on friday. (Managed to cancel the work for tonight without taking the huge hit I expected.) I guess I won't take chances with brand new/old bits and the wierd world of ibm pc incompatibility I now find myself in. (No more IDE on new boards, really?? And what is this RAID thing? A new way to stop hardware bugs? I'm sooo far behind on the hardware.)

Just one last thing, with these dual cores the clock speed is ridiculously low in comparison to their older single core counterparts. Should I get one of these dubious things or stick with a nice northwood?

On preview: Maybe one day as a project but since I can't even tell which one(s) are fried I would need to remove a large number of them and test each one (can't test in place).
posted by IronLizard at 11:12 AM on March 13, 2007

Here is a thread on the emachine model t2792, looks like it is a standard 478 pin micro ATX (mATX) board. If you can confirm the power supply is OK, a motherboard swap should be pretty painless. I was concerned that you might have a non-ATX power supply, but looks like that isn't an issue.

Sounds like you have a multimeter, so you can try testing the power supply. Not foolproof, because some faults won't show up, but worth a try.

No more IDE on new boards, really?? And what is this RAID thing?

The latest Intel chipset boards often have only a single IDE channel, and it is not provided by the chipset but by some dubious external controller. To keep it simple, think of it as a hard drive mirror. With RAID (RAID-1, technically) the computer does exactly the same things to two drives at the same time, so if one drive fails, the other is there to take over. It won't help with any other hardware problem, just data corruption caused by failing drives.

with these dual cores the clock speed is ridiculously low in comparison to their older single core counterparts.

Dual core (or dual CPU) is awesome. Leaving that aspect aside though.. A single core of a Core 2 Duo is 1.5-2x faster than Pentium 4 at the same clock speed. A single core of a Pentium D is basically the same speed as a Pentium 4 (cache changes, but whatever). Unfortunately Core 2's are still pretty expensive. Pentium D 920s can be found for ~$70, and will over clock to 3.5 GHz pretty easily. I think that is the sweat spot for price/performance at the moment.

Well, I have 130 in hand and can definitely count on around that much more by this evening. For that I think can throw together half of a system (damn near everything but the ram)

I'd look at doing the motherboard swap. It should cost ~$50. You could look at this as an opportunity to upgrade, in which case try looking over Computer upgrade options. Prices and models have changed, but the logic is the same. There is a chance you could go to a Pentium D 920 while keeping your old memory, but I'm not sure an upgrade is worth the added trouble. Finally, you could get a back up system, like a $50 PIII from vfxweb, just to keep you going while repairs/upgrades happen - it needs some more memory to be useful though..
posted by Chuckles at 12:43 PM on March 13, 2007

With four old HD's attached and spinning, all the power levels in the psu were at nominal levels: 11.84, 4.88, 3.33 (roughly, I probably switched a hundreth place here and there). It is, however, somewhat noisy. But then, it's been noisy forever. If the swap goes cheaply enough, I'll pick up another one just to be safe and for possible use with a later build.

Also: I already have a backup system, I'm on it now. Problem is: p266 128meg Win2k and a really BAD 6gig HD. I literally put this thing together from scrap for use as a machine controller but it won't run (or even let me install) certain apps I need.

Well, you've certainly given me the inspiration to try my original idea, thanks :)
I've packed up the memory and processor into anti static bags and will see if a store will test them for me (the ram I'm sure, the processor not so much). I probably do need another system soon, but fifty dollars to fix this is to hard to resist trying. Come to think of it I don't really need an upgrade at all (with the possible exceptions of more RAM and HD space). I'm keeping my fingers crossed (not superstitious).
posted by IronLizard at 1:57 PM on March 13, 2007

Ended up buying a new board and processor (the socket 478 I needed was too difficult to find locally, discontinued or too expensive for old tech). After a few mistakes (buying a lga775 board, and some hair pulling, I have a new MB and processor similar to the old, but infinitely more upgradeable and with a better video card. Oh, and instead of forking out for a new PSU, I picked up a nice case with one included. Ended up running about 260 for everything (they must have looked in my wallet). The only nuisance is that the board didn't come with a backplate and the case has one that won't fit. I am also, unfortunately, stuck with Vista now because I really don't feel like forking out 85$ more for XP after all of this. I'll get some more ram over the weekend which should improve things. All in all, its a new PC besides the HD and RAM. Thanks for the help!
posted by IronLizard at 6:49 PM on March 14, 2007

:)

Now, if you are interested.. I would a keep my eyes peeled for a s478 board, a little memory, and some old hard drive, and you will have a decent back up system for less than $100 - OK, maybe not cheap enough..
posted by Chuckles at 9:06 PM on March 14, 2007

Oh, not at all, the kids needs something better, after all :)

(Since I put off the mill, my son has been playing games on the backup and for this I can order from newegg since there's no hurry)
posted by IronLizard at 9:33 PM on March 14, 2007